Around March 1, 1826

In this day and age, newspapers rarely print fiction. Of course, there is the occasional magical story written by a third grade class that appears every once a week in the Arts and Entertainment section of the paper, but for the most part, fictional stories of real substance are not published in newspapers anymore. This was not the case in the 1800's. Appearing in The Valley Star each week was...

During the Second Great Awakening, there were many religious figures who transformed the way the general population thought about religion and its social practices. Much of the new religious thought came from upstate New York from areas called “burned-over districts,” because of the frequency with which they experienced religious revivals, or transformative incidents, which changed a person’s...

On January 9, 1826, in Washington, D.C., the American Colonization Society (ACS) convened to review the annual “Report of the Managers.” William H. Fitzhugh, Esq. of Virginia, a vice president of the society, offered resolutions to expand funding options. With a task as large as removing and relocating freed blacks from the United States back to Africa, “private charity is inadequate to...

Mathew Buchanan's letter in 1826 nervously mentioned intelligence that Thomas Edmiston's heirs were trying to take over his land in Washington County, Virginia. He would not give up his land without a fight, but one small problem arose. He had no proof that he owned it. Buchanan found out that land dealings could get nasty. Initially, he had partnered with Thomas Edmiston to purchase a piece...

A man swept into a dimly lit tavern and muttered, "Whiskey," in a hoarse voice before collapsing into a creaky wooden chair. On the table next to him lay a folded newspaper with the day's date. He snatched up the paper, the Virginia Gazette, and began leafing through it. He nodded to himself when he read that in North Carolina some planters held a contest to see whose slaves could...

Keep little or no money about you or in your trunk, John Bisland advised his son in a letter between the two, since you left this place our negro peer got a key and opened my trunk, he had robbed me of about 900 dollars. Issues between slaves and their masters especially problems with theft became a growing dilemma in the nineteenth century and a consisted of about half of the trials in the Adams...

Alexander Gall advertised his ice delivery service in Portsmouth's American Beacon and Portsmouth Daily on May 18, 1826. Gall's advertisement ran in the local newspaper for a month. This allowed for the news of Gall's service to effectively spread among the people of Portsmouth. Gall brought ice to the homes of his customers in a horse-drawn wagon. Gall delivered ice daily to...

In an 1826 article, an Alabama newspaper warned readers and slave buyers of an untrustworthy slave trader who dealt in kidnapped free blacks. Victims were found in Mississippi, greatly abused or dead. The slave trader had even captured a young free black boy from his parents. The free men informed a gentleman, at whose house he stopped, that they were free born, and begged his interference to...

In the beginning of the 1820s, Albemarle County merchants advertised all year round of large stocks of staples they had for sale at Reasonable Prices, Bacon, cured in the manner for family use, nice white corn meal, and Barrels Brown sugar different quantities are just a few examples. By 1826, a new kind of merchant had come to town. John Cochran & Co. took up occupancy in a well-known building...

The country is new, timber plenty, cheep, convenient; and consequentially we have, on good terms, the best materials for building bridges and causeways stated the author of a Mississippi newspaper article. People began settling throughout the east coast, transforming transportation into an extremely important part of life. Consequently, as the economy began to bloom, items needed to be brought to...